Exclusive: The Big Help empire has collapsed. Now, Peter Mitchell looks to Ukraine

On the afternoon of Wednesday 21st May, around forty employees of Big Help Group and Big Help Trading — just two of the companies connected to the once-lauded charity Big Help Project — were called into a small meeting room at their head office on Boaler Street.

One of Big Help Group’s directors, former Knowsley Council leader Andrew Moorhead, stood at the front of the room, staring at his feet. “I have a short statement to make,” he can be heard saying sheepishly in a secret recording leaked to The Post. “It’s with great sadness and reluctance that we have to announce we have exhausted all means to pay wages this month.”

Moorhead said his team had fought to the “11th hour”. It was no use. Every employee at both companies — as well as other Big Help associated entities — would lose their jobs with immediate effect; their accrued wages left unpaid with no redundancy pay, either. The room erupted into anger. “So what are people with families and mortgages supposed to do?” one employee asks. “These [organisations were] based on helping people, and you’ve just left us in the lurch.”

“Unfortunately these circumstances are out of my control,” Moorhead replies, “so I can’t answer that”. 

While it fell on Moorhead to break the news, Peter Mitchell, the man once at the helm of nearly all of the companies and charities within the Big Help empire, was nowhere to be seen. Since The Post published the most recent story in our ongoing series on Big Help, revealing one of Mitchell’s businesses lied about being a Homes England government partner, he has walked away altogether, resigning from the board of every company in Big Help’s sprawling web — that is, with the exception of those already wound up. 

What was once considered one of the North West’s proudest charity-based groups, boasting a multi-million pound turnover, more than 3,000 properties under its management and local football club Southport FC to boot, has now been reduced to a shadow of its former self. The Charity Commission is investigating two entities within the Big Help empire (Big Help Project and CG Community Council) for financial misconduct, and a further compliance review has been launched into a third (Dovecot and Princess Drive Community Association). Earlier this month, Mitchell himself was also declared personally bankrupt, as well as his partner, serving Liverpool councillor Colette Goulding.

While Mitchell’s spokesperson told us in plain terms he won’t be commenting on any more of our stories “now or in the future”, we can offer some insight into what he’s been up to. He and his closest associates are already pursuing a new venture — this time turning their focus to war torn Ukraine in an attempt to salvage the Big Help name, setting up a new base in the tax haven of Gibraltar.